SENATE BILL DISPUTE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27675, 3 June 1955, Page 13

SENATE BILL DISPUTE IN SOUTH AFRICA

(Rec. 10 p.m.) CAPE TOWN, June 2. Opposition leaders announced yesterday a new plan to minimise the risk that if they gain power at the next General Election in South Africa they might have to face a hostile Senate. The Opposition argue that the Nationalist Government’s controversial Senate Bill which is intended to enlarge the Senate will—because of changes it proposes in the system of electing senators also entrench Nationalists in the Senate for the next five years. The next General Election for the Assembly is due in 1958, two years before the Senate’s term would expire.

The Opposition claim that if they won the 1958 election the Nationalistpacked Senate would leave them powerless as a government for at least two years.

The Government’s Senate Eill provides for the enlargement of the Senate as a step toward diminishing the voting rights of people of mixed race by removing them from the common electoral roll. It also provides a new basis for the election of senators by electoral colleges. There is one electoral college for each province. Each college meeting'at the provincial capital consists of members of the provincial council, sitting together with members representing that province in the lower house of the national parliament in Cane Town.

Three colleges at present elect senators by a proportional representation system, but the Government’s new legislation provides for them to elect senators by a majority vote. The United party Opposition claims that because the Nationalists at present control three of South Africa’s four provinces, these provinces’ electoral colleges would return only Government. senators. But amendments placed on the order paper in the lower house vesterday by Mr Jacobus Strauss, the United party Opposition leader, and

Mr Frank Waring, Conservative party member, are aimed at removing or diminishing this possibility. The amendments would enable a new government, if it so wished, to order immediate elections for provincial councils. The Senate elections could then follow.

The Opposition claim that this would bring about improved prospects of broadly reducing or eliminating the Senate Nationalist majority which the Senate Bill’s present terms ensure would last for the next five years. The bill provides that the Senate be dissolved 'immediately, and be reconstituted with 89 seats instead of with 48 as it present. This would give the Government a two thirds Senate majority.